UTeach Alumni & Student Virtual Summit
July 21, 2026
This free summit was packed with alumni- and teacher-led presentations to provide participants with hands-on strategies, powerful skills, and amazing national connections.
Power and Purpose: Defining the Future of STEM Education
The UTeach Alumni and Student Virtual Summit is your opportunity to connect, collaborate, and grow as a STEM educator. This year's theme, Power and Purpose: Defining the Future of STEM Teaching, focuses on the role educators and professional communities play in shaping the future of STEM learning.
The Summit offers a space for the UTeach community to share expertise and begin the academic year with renewed energy. We welcome submissions from various stakeholders, including UTeach program faculty, staff, students, alumni, and mentor teachers.
Featured Opening Speaker
Building Student Leadership Through STEM Clubs
Basilio Pesina
2026 USEA Outstanding Alumni award recipient
UTRGV UTeach Alumnus
Basilio is a Computer Science teacher and robotics coach at IDEA San Benito College Preparatory in South Texas. Through computer science, robotics, and STEM clubs, he helps students build confidence, take ownership, and grow as leaders through hands-on learning. As a UTeach alumnus, Basilio is committed to expanding STEM opportunities for students and supporting teachers who want to build meaningful learning spaces.
This talk will inspire any teacher looking to start or grow a STEM club. Basilio will share his story, lessons learned, and a simple 3-step approach: start small, build student roles, and release leadership. Teachers will leave with one clear next step to grow student ownership in their club, school, and community.
UTeach McDonald Observatory Fellow
Art in the Galaxy: The Impact of the "A" in STEAM
Samoni Griffin
UFTeach
This presentation explores the connection between art and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics). It demonstrates how artistic creativity and scientific discovery work together to deepen our understanding of the universe. By examining the colors, patterns, and structures of galaxies, participants will discover how astronomy inspires artistic expression while technology and mathematics help explain cosmic phenomena.
Workshops
Beyond the Worksheet
Mashal Khan
UTeach Dallas
Are your students stuck in "autopilot" mode? Swap the repetitive worksheets for impactful cognitive engagement. This session moves past rote memorization to focus on tools that sharpen students' analysis and problem-solving skills. You’ll walk away with a versatile toolkit of activity templates (that are fully adaptable to any Physics TEKS) designed to shift the heavy lifting of thinking back onto the students.
Canva in the Classroom
Cecilia Largey
UTeach Dallas Alumnus
Come discover ways you can use Canva in your classroom — from tools and templates to help streamline planning to customized AI-powered review games, with a few other tips, tricks, and shortcuts sprinkled in between. Topics include: Basic Design Tools, Resources and Templates, Whiteboard, Functionality Tips and Tricks, Apps, and AI Tools. Participants will have the opportunity to explore these tools, create resources for their classroom, and leave with a “Copyright and Canva” student lesson.
ED Talks
Join us for the first block of Student and Alumni EdTalks, featuring 15-minute presentations on digital learning environments and students collecting data to better understand the world around them.
Designing Digital Learning
Meghan DiBacco
teachHOUSTON
Digital tools are transforming how teachers organize content, communicate, and foster collaboration in the classroom. This EdTalk will explore how teachers can use programs like Canva to create an engaging learning environment that supports creativity and accessibilty for students. Through examples and demonstrations, this session will highlight how to create digital notebooks, lab instructions, and interactives to help students.
Metacognition in Motion
Mashal Khan
UTeach Dallas
This EdTalk will go over techniques to maximize the impact of summative assessments in the classroom. Participants will go through a modeled exercise simulating test corrections. Participants will learn techniques that allow students to analyze their own testing data to identify their own strengths and areas for improvement
Hurricane Hunting 101
Madelene Trujillo
UTRGV UTeach
In this inquiry-based hurricane lesson, participants will analyze authentic meteorological data to explore predictability in complex systems. By examining relationships among pressure, wind speed, and storm structure, participants will also compare idealized benchmark ranges to real storm behavior. This process reveals how apparent chaos often reflects data limitations, using hurricanes to develop scientific reasoning and systems thinking.
Join us for the second block of Student and Alumni EdTalks, featuring 15-minute presentations centered on community and growth.
Picking your Battles
Caitlin Rosal
NevadaTeach Alumnus
This session explores practical strategies for building positive, trusting relationships with students, particularly in schools serving diverse communities and students who may face additional challenges or barriers to success. Participants will examine how intentionally choosing which classroom behaviors to address can reduce unnecessary power struggles, strengthen relationships, and create a more positive learning environment. By focusing on what matters most, educators can build trust and increase their impact on student engagement and success.
Reflect. Connect. Grow.
Morgan Goering
UC Irvine
Reflect. Connect. Grow. is an adult learning framework that helps leaders and educators move from information to meaningful action. This EdTalk offers a practical, interactive introduction to the framework and explores how reflection, contextual connection, and purposeful next steps can strengthen adult learning, ownership, and implementation in leadership and professional learning spaces.